by Matilda Hart
‘Did he really? It was plain to everyone but you how extraordinarily distasteful he found you and your boorish behaviour. He was constantly giving your sister looks that begged her to somehow get him away from you as you clung to him at dinner. Even tried to dance with him. It was amusing at first, a silly girl with a crush, but you put yourself in real danger today for a man who has no interest in you–’
‘But–,’ I begin.
‘– and ignoring one who clearly loves you.’
I feel utterly humiliated. How could I have misread the situation so badly. He gave every sign, the anxiety, the lingering glances, the teasing. Could I really have misread all those actions, were his mockery sincere, his fear: distaste rather than attraction. I feel sick and can feel tears pricking my eyes. Had my plans been so obvious to everyone around me…
And then I realise what he said, it trickles through the laudanum haze and lands smack right over my heart, heavy and constricting: ignoring someone who clearly loves you.
‘What do you meaning ignoring someone who loves me?’ Does he means himself? I think, afraid of the answer. To say anything. I am suddenly aware that a silence is sitting between us pregnant with meaning. He is gathering himself for his answer awaiting a response.
‘But after all that, why would you love me?’ I ask. ‘If I am so crass and boorish?’
‘Because what he sees as crassness comes from strength of will, your foolishness from a depth of sentiment, a willingness to give yourself over fully to an idea, or fancy. Only your snobbery is unforgivable, and that is a relief, it would be a bore to love someone who lacked any flaws at all.’
‘Like Claire?’ I ask.
‘Like Claire,’ is his reply. The pieces begin to fall slowly into place. There is really nothing that has happened that I have not read out wrong. All the time there was Evan, watching out for me, trying to protect me from my own pigheaded desire to make a laughing stock of myself.
‘I’m such a fool,’ I say. Wanting to cry but feeling far to exhausted by everything. This is the final defeat and I just want to lie back and let sleep obliterate it all.
He says nothing for moment, as I stare at the thin blade of moonlight on the floor. Then I feel his hands on mine, I look up and while I wallowed he has moved from the chair to sit on the bed.
He looks at me with questioning eyes and before he can say anything I cut him off, ‘Don’t ask for permission. Show some strength of will yourself.’
He pulls me in close and cups his hand under my chin, there is something hesitant in his movements, nothing like what I imagined for my first kiss, but there is a thick tension, an anxiety about it that borders on exhilaration.
He leans in and I feel his lips on mine. For a moment I am frozen, unsure what to do, and then I give in to instinct. There is a deep passion on his side in the kiss, years of unsatisfied longing overflowing into the gentle touch of lip to lip. I hold off a little, reserved unsure of what all these feeling which come boiling up in me are. It is overpowering, tongue to teeth, and my heart hammering louder than Galahad’s hooves at a gallop, I can barely breathe. My exact emotion are still in a whirl but they are right and good whatever they are. I kiss him back, running my hands through his hair, feeling the scratch of his cheek against mine.
He breaks away in an awkward half lean across the bed, his hand is still on my cheek. Then he stands up and says, ‘I– I really should go. I only meant to chide you about… I am sorry, if I was too forward. I should go.’
He is about to turn but I catch his hand. My voice is hoarse with joy, an upwelling of love, and with the fear and sadness of the day.
‘Stay,’ is all I can manage to say to him. ‘Please stay.’
Chapter Eight
He stays. He stays and everything falls away but us two.
He sits for a moment on the edge of the bed, his hand passive, held tight by mine. ‘Say something,’ I say.
He looks at me with a smile on his face, but says nothing.
‘Then kiss me again,’ I say, and he smiles.
‘You are always so in control, Alice. Such strength of will,’ he says. I pull his hand to my heart and reach up to him. He mounts the bed, kneeling. My heart is beating wildly beneath my breast, and I am as afraid now as I was on Galahad the day he nearly fell at Thatcher’s Corner the first time. But I know more than the fear what I want, and what I want is not Lord Atwater. I push through the fear, knowing – without knowing how or why – that what waits for me on the other side of fear will be worth it.
This is the Marquess I want, and he has never looked to me so fitting of his titles and honours. In fact, he looks positively regal in the firelight, and I realise how much of him I just took for granted. How his good features completely passed me by because they were always there by my side as we grew up together.
We were children together, he was always there, always older and more knowledgable, more careful. He took the place of my own better judgement, kept me from my more wilfully dangerous pursuits. But until this moment I had missed the fact that he had become a man, that we were no longer children, that he had held onto his feelings for me and I had ignored, or never noticed, my own for him.
He says I am strong, but right now I feel weak, close to fainting, and only the force that made me kneel before the keyhole drives me to pull him into me as I drop back onto my pillow. I can see whatever that force is pulling him to me as much as it is dragging me to him. We cannot stop it now, all that follows is a foregone conclusion. And I wouldn’t want to stop it, even if I could.
I am saying, ‘Kiss me, Evan,’ and he does, a long lingering kiss. As with last time. My lips part gently and I breathe him in. His lips part too and push harder against my own. He is above me now, pushing my head into the pillow, just as I imagined Clayton doing, one hand holding himself over me, the other cupping my cheek, caressing it, running through my hair, over my neck.
I feel like there is a fire burning in me, one that needs quenching, and can only be quenched by him. My hands run grip his hair, pulling him harder into the kiss. His tongue is against my teeth pushing them apart, harrying, probing, testing for weaknesses. I meet it with my own tongue, and they touch gently at first, but as our passions overtake us they thrust against each other like armies locked in combat. I surrender and I feel his tongue inside me, slick against my own.
He pulls away for a moment to drag my covers back then he is on top of me for real, his hips knees parting my legs, pressing forward, lifting up my nightgown. I roll my hips up to meet his, the weight of his comes up against mine. I can feel the firmness in his breeches pressing against my sex.
I want it. I want him. I want. I am nothing but wanting now, nothing have my own longing deep within me. A great pressure I can barely contain. I want to scream or thrash about or something to vent it. The hunger needs satisfaction that I would gladly die right now to get it. I bite his lip, rolling my hips against him, but he holds back, denying me. Never giving me the purchase on him that I crave.
My hands at his back, tearing at his shirt as I scrabble to drag it over his head. He rocks back onto his knees and throws the shirt to the floor. I can see the light on his face, twisted now into an animal expression. I have done this, have driven him wild. We are like the Maenads in a frenzy of lust.
No tenderness any more, just this thumping, throbbing want.
His stomach is hard and the light of the fire deepens the definition around each muscle. My hands are struggling with the knot that hold his breeches up and just as the knot comes loose he takes my hands firmly in his and pulls them away, holding them together as I struggle he pulls down his breeches then leans forward and kicks them off. Still holding me prisoner in his left hand. I have no control and his hands guide mine up above my head, and I am aware of the power of his masculine strength.
I desperately want to touch myself – he is gorgeous, naked, his body perfect and I wonder if under everything else I had always wanted him – but he keeps my hands in his
grip.
Then he his jerking up my nightgown, pulling it over my head to bare my breasts to him. He looks me over, taking it all in: my legs, my smooth stomach, the dark patch of hair between my legs. My hands are free for only a moment then he seizes them again, and kisses me hard.
I am frantic, I will burst if he doesn’t do something and then there is the gentle brush of his free hand against me, sliding down between my legs, parting first the soft hair, gently and entering me. A sharp pain and a sharper pleasure rushes through my body at his touch. His kisses move from my mouth which feels bruised and raw from the passion, his tongue slides across my neck, pulls away, his lips touch, suck gently move again. Lower still.
His fingers are moving gently within me, a slow rhythm than feels like nothing I have ever felt before, I am sure I am moaning too loud that I will wake the house. I imagine the servants peeping in through the peephole and the thought merely amplifies the pleasure.
He kisses my clavicle, delicately, as one does a crucifix. Then down again. He lets my hands free and I press them to his head, pushing his mouth towards my breasts. His free hand takes one gently, encircling my breast, cupping it as if weighing it – gently, oh so gently though.
Then his mouth is on my other breast and the pleasure amplifies, I had no idea I could feel like this. Every nerve ending in my body seems alive with pleasure which grows and grows with every suckle, every touch, every probe.
His fingers move in and out of me faster, his own excitement carrying him away. ‘Ow, I say,’ as he pushes to hard with his hand. He backs off slightly, but only a little. He has no more control than I do.
He leaves my breast, kisses my stomach and his lips take the place of his fingers. This is a whole new sensation, his head between my thighs. He takes a few goes to find the rhythm again, persuaded in the right direction by my moans and the occasional helping word. ‘Faster… but not so hard….gentle, my love, gentle… just right.’
The pleasure is building, building, and I feel on the cusp of something new and extraordinary if he can do that for just a few more strokes… and then he pulls away his hands and mouth leaving me bereft, wild, desperate for more.
Language has left me, I am no longer a human, reduced only to my most fundamental part: the part that wants. I look down and see his member erect in his hand, almost as if he is offering it to me. I take it in one hand and with great pleasure hear him groan.
Now it is his turn to guide me. I work my hand up and down gentle at first but as he thrusts his hips viciously at me stroke after stroke I take it more firmly. There is thrill in this control, here he is in the palm of my hand, utterly beholden to me. And in his turn just as he seems about to peak and lose control completely. I let go of him, place my hands either side of his hips and pulling him forward, back between my legs.
Words return to me finally, and I find the ones I need: ‘Take me,’ I say and guide him into me. I gasp as he fills me in one smooth stroke, right up to the hilt. He feels inside me within me pressing against me from without and within. I can barely tell what is me and what is him. Every nerve is burning wherever our skin touches it feels electric.
The feeling is unworldly and as he pulls back sliding out of me, then returning, like a swell crashing against the shore.
He pumps back and forth, in and out, slowly, slowly, testing the limits. Then he picks up speed, pressing deeper, thrusting harder, faster pausing less and less at the end of each stroke. The pleasure begins to build and subside, build and subside, with each of his thrusts. Each time a little higher and a little higher. I am doing everything I can to press my body against him, meet each assault with my own counter-attack.
And then the building pleasure bursts, every muscle in my body spasms as wave after wave of pleasure rushes through me. He doesn’t stop and neither do those spasms of joy. I am filled up with it, bursting with it, there is nothing in all the world but me and him and this energy which is exploding inside me. Wave after wave of pleasure rushes through me, top to toe. Slowly subsiding, as my first orgasm passes, I am aware of his hand firmly over my mouth and realise I have been moaning or screaming or shouting almost since he entered me. My throat is hoarse and I can only imagine Claire in her bed hearing the same noises she must have made for Clayton coming from her sister’s room.
But Evan is not finished and he continues to thrust into me, while it feels good the urgency is gone.
He stops for a moment and I feel him drag me up, onto my knees, then turn me so I am on all fours. Now he mounts me gain he mounts me, thrusting into me, and the change of angle is just the trick. The pleasure is sharper, harder, comes in clearer spiking peaks as his frenzy becomes ever more animalistic, more powerful and masculine. I remember that this is how the dogs and cattle breed and that thought frees me from human concerns. As I feel another the bow-wave of another orgasm closing in I am no longer worried about screaming.
Evan pumping viciously, reaches around and wraps his arm around my neck, taking my throat in the crook of his elbow. This cuts my scream off, and his other hand slams over my mouth. He is grunting behind me, if I told him to stop I doubt he’d hear. I gasp for breath, my ears tingling, the second orgasm hits and I am blind, near to passing out. I cannot use my legs and I jerk violently as wave after wave slams through me. I wish Lord Atwater could hear this, could see this. I am totally in thrall to Evan’s movements his action. The wave hits me again and I am drowning in it every time he slams into me it hits me again. I am choking, he doesn’t realise how hard he is holding me. But I do not care I am crying, I am joyful, and I am filled with a white hot heat of this night.
Then there is a sudden thrust, so hard it feels like a blow. He holds for a moment and then he thrusts again, twice more, and then collapses on top of me, forcing me flat against the bed with his manhood still inside me and his grip on my throat relaxes. Air rushes back into my brain but does little good, it is flooded with the satisfaction, overawed.
We lie like that, stupid and exhausted, for an age before he pulls out of me and rolls away onto the mattress.
Only now do I begin to fear the that someone may have heard our noise, may come to see what is happening. But the noises of the house are inanimate, the clock, the creak of rafters, the crackle of the fire. Nothing stirs except my heart and his, beating side by side in my bed.
After a moment he turns to me and slides a hand under my head, pulling me close. I rest my head on his shoulder and reach across so that my wrist sits over his chest so I can feel that heart hammering in time to my own. He stares at the ceiling and I stare at him.
I whisper, ‘Stay. Stay with me,’ and he smiles a private smile before propping himself up and kissing me.
‘Goodnight,’ he says, and settles in close.
He falls asleep quickly, but I can’t. I replay the whole week in my head, wondering what went wrong, how I missed all this. I got it all so wrong, and it turned out so right. I offer up a prayer to whatever pagan god negotiates affairs of the heart then, completely satisfied, I let exhaustion takes me both into the dark.
Chapter Nine
A few weeks later I am dancing at Clayton’s wedding. Evan’s hand in mine, his other hand at my waist as we move in time to the slow waltz which my sister chose for the first set.
There is a twelve piece orchestra playing the music and the guests from one end of the country to the next are drunk, almost to the man. Champagne fizzes in my brain and Evan cannot stop smiling at me.
He and I pass back and forth the sort of wit we always have, but there is no bitterness to it anymore, no sense of his authority, my desire to hurt. He is beautiful, like any statue of David in the renaissance way, he could have been cut from stone, or cast in bronze. And I cannot help but wonder how it took me my whole life up to this point to see it.
The last few weeks have been a revelation, to have Evan on my arm, someone who I trust entirely and who I know so well, someone as attractive and kind, and all of it like a lightning bolt strike, straight o
ut of heaven and utterly unexpected.
Evan found excuses to stay in our house often, running messages from his father, or simply finding himself in the area. Those nights have been spent breathless and awake in each other’s arms. Learning each other’s bodies like mapping a newly discovered country.
At times he is tender at times wild. When he is gone I still lie awake at night thinking of what I want him to do to me, what I will do to him.
Even here in the ballroom in front of everyone my thoughts are of the moment I tried that soldiers prostitutes trick with her feet, as Evan tried to suppress his laughter at my clumsy efforts.
I think of how I have learnt to use my hands just so, and he his. I think of what it will be like to grow old in his families home. To learn the Scottish family traditions, to help him run the estate. I imagine Christmases many years ahead, me and my sister’s gathered about the fires as snow falls across the moors. And our husbands talking of how things have changed from that first week when I was nearly thrown from my horse all those years ago.
But mostly I am thinking of tonight, when the guests are gone and my sister and Clayton retire to their marriage bed, and we, to ours. I ache for him.
The service was a delight, my sister in her veil walked down the cathedral’s huge aisle to the bellowing organ. The party was small, just our family and Clayton’s, even Evan was not invited, which gave me plenty of time to watch Lord Atwater at the front of the church as he waited for the bride to arrive. His brother was bearing the rings, and his father stood by to scold the party with a look should anyone make a mistake in the vows. Clayton was beautiful too in his own way, tall and finely featured. And I still wish that Evan had his poetic abilities.
The night after we stayed together he tried to write me a sonnet. The metre was perfect but the rhymes were old and the tone sterile and archaic.
